I’ll blog about how I made the costumes soon! And you can expect me to be a more frequent blogger soon too. I have my first day off in 77 days tomorrow – first priority is my girls/family and next – get back to some crafty crafting!

My beautiful, sweet Persimoni Mae. I can hardly believe that you are already 6 months! I can’t believe that a year ago you were still growing in my belly and I could only dream of how amazing you’d be.

You did not disappoint! You are still such an amazing little baby. You cry when tired or hungry…that’s pretty much it. I think you’re probably teething a bit so that makes you fussy at time but nothing a little snuggle can’t handle.

You’re sitting up completely on your own now. If I lay you on your back you immediately roll to your side. It won’t be long until I have to get the baby gate up because you’ll be moving around like crazy. You do push ups when you’re on your belly and do a ‘beached whale’ like chicken pecking motion because you want to be where the action is.

I can tell that you’re just dreaming about being able to play with your big sisters. Don’t worry…it won’t be too much longer and the three of you will be all getting into trouble together.

I’ve missed seeing you all the time this apple season but I know you’ve been in amazing hands. I know you’ve been given the care and attention that I wouldn’t have been able to in the store. And I know that all your little friends at daycare loved you and took care of you. I am so grateful that I found such a loving, caring place for you to be. Thank you. Thank you ‘Aunt Necie’ for providing that for my children through the years I’ve known you – I don’t know how I would have gotten through apple season without you.

Next week I’ll have you home with me much more and things in general will calm down for awhile. I can’t wait to play with you, snuggle with you, change your diapers (I know – I’m crazy for missing this), and see all your silly faces as you eat.

I’ve mentioned before that I am doing Weight Watchers again. I did it after I had Capri and I lost almost 60 pounds. I’ll admit – it’s going a little slower this time around but I’m still doing it – I got to just over 17 pounds at my meeting last Monday! I broke down one my orchard’s Mixes into points so I could still enjoy one of my favorite desserts and be able to easily track what I was eating! We’ve modified this recipe to not need any additional butter and because of that it’s really important that you use McIntosh apples.

Lapacek’s Taffy Apple Cake

Ingredients

1 serving(s) Lapacek's Cake Mix

4 pound(s) apple(s), McIntosh, peeled, cored and chopped

396 gm Borden® Eagle Brand® Fat free sweetened condensed milk

Instructions

Spray bottom of a 8x12 pan with cooking spray. Put two cups of the Lapacek's Orchard Taffy Apple Cake Mix on the bottom of the pan. Peel, core and slice 4 pounds of McIntosh apples. Fill up the pan to slightly overfull . Sprinkle on the rest of the cake mix. Pour the Fat-Free Sweetened Condense Milk over the entire cake. Bake at 325 for 40 minutes.

It try not to overlap blog posts on my blogs too often but this is just too good of a story to not share with as many people as possible…

Before I go any farther I’ll start by assuring you that emus are fine and they’re happily back in their pen.

At about 8:45 I get a call from Frank - “Is Jared there? The emus are out.” Me, “Crap, I’ll get him…”

I yell for Jared and we both bundle up quickly and head outside…of course I grabbed my camera. We’re walking over to the emu pen area and Diane is organizing the pumpkin area – we quietly tell her the emus are out. Diane and I get the dogs into the shed so they won’t scare the emus. If you remember reading my earlier emu post, emus can sprint up to 30mph so we didn’t want to cause that to happen… Mac never went too far from the pen and it was fairly easy to lure him back in – a little food will do just the trick.Tosh turned out to be a bit more work. She headed over to where the underground building used to be and decided to do a little grazing. Luckily for us our Emu Whisperer (EW), aka Frank, was on the top of his game. He grabbed to sticks to emulate longer arms. If you can be taller than the bird they feel that you are dominating them and will sort of go where you direct them.

If you listen close at the end of the video you can also hear that EW (Frank) is real good at calmly talking to Tosh and gets him to go the direction he wants. Once we got Tosh fairly close to the pen the whole venture slowed down – she didn’t really want to go back. So, taking his dad’s advice, Jared got behind her and wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug and carried her over. Of course – I barely got this shot, let alone a picture at all. Jared said she wasn’t heavy – just boney and awkward to carry. Soon, we had both of the emus safely back into their pen and the door securely shut.

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